I Me Rin
by miss selah
Summary: She's fitting in, but only barely. [Rin Sesshoumaru if you squint] [Originally posted as FDS Interlude Chapter 19] [Post Series]


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**I Me Rin **  
interlude: Chapter Nineteen of Fish Don't Sleep

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In all of the fairy tales that Rin had ever forced from Jaken, whenever something bad happened, something dramatic that changed the heroes life forever in the worst way possible, the sky was always dark with storm clouds drifting too quickly over the horizon, and it would feel like rain and smell like sulfur. Whenever something truly awful would happen, evil would have a tangible presence and she always figured that you could reach out and defeat it with only a sword.

Some evils, she learned, you could not beat with a weapon. And some evils, she learned, did not present themselves with ominous signs. Some times terrible things happened, and the skies were blue and the bird were singing. Some evils are so evil that they don't seem evil at all.

But some times you knew.

"But. . . Lord Sesshoumaru, I don't understand." mumbled Rin, who was tearing up and trying her hardest not to cry but failing anyways. "Have I not been a good child?" She had practically been raised by him – she could remember no parents before him. He was the one – the one that she loved and respected more than anyone else in the world. She knew instinctively that they were more than a group of wandering vagabonds; Lord Sesshoumaru was canine, so they were all canine. They were all a pack. Rin wanted nothing more than to be just like him, canine and powerful and strong. She was human, but there was a little pup inside of her that he had raised, and the pup wanted nothing more than to cower at his feet with her tail between her legs, licking his chin until he told her that he loved her again. They were a pack, loyal to each other. And above all else, they absolutely did not abandon one another.

This was the sort of evil that perhaps you could only defeat with love.

"You have done nothing wrong, girl!" Jaken squawked alongside her, answering her where Sesshoumaru failed to give her more than a simple once over. "But there are matters of the state which Lord Sesshoumaru must attend to on his own that do not concern little girls, and so you must stay here where it is safe!" He tapped his staff to the ground, as if doing so was putting and end to the discussion in a that-is-that sort of way.

Jaken was seeming to forget, though, that in their mismatched pack, he barely made Beta.

"You will stay here and protect her." Sesshoumaru didn't bother to look at his servant as he began to put the bridle that he had purchased for Rin at a town not far behind them on Ah-Un, so that she would have an easier time staying on the dragon without Sesshoumaru there to guide them. He wished that he had been able to locate a sadle, too, so that the child wouldn't have to ride bare-back, but all he could find was a thick piece of clothe and a belly band to hold it in place. It wasn't his first choice, but saddles were so scarce these days. With demonic activity at it's lowest in centuries from the disapperance of the Shikon no Tama, there were no demons to kill, making the only source of leather the expensive cows. It took so long to stretch and tan the hides that it almost wasn't even worth the trouble.

Sesshoumaru knelt down silently and picked the child up underneath her arms and on to the dragon. "You tuck your feet in to the belly band, like this." Sesshoumaru pulled the belly band around Ah-Un's stomach out and slipped her feet under it before he let it go with a snap. Rin winced a bit, and Sesshoumaru shook his head.

"If you wore your lovely shoes that Lord Sesshoumaru was gracious enough to purchase for you, then it wouldn't have hurt!" Jaken reprimanded from the ground, and rewarded the girl with a light smack on the knee for her insolence.

"Yes, Jaken-sama."

Sesshoumaru cracked a rare and light smile. "You make a fine nursemaid, Jaken." He said, and handed the kappa a heavy satchel full of heavy gold coins. "There is a villa just up the way full of good people that I know. Take Rin there and you will be safe until I return." Sesshoumaru didn't tell him that he had no plans on returning any time in the near future, because the parting was awkward enough already and he didn't think that his heart could stand to see any more of the girl's tears. There was something about the little girl- child that just made him want to second-guess himself at every turn, and this time, he couldn't afford to give in to her whims. The battlefields where he would no doubt end up were no place for a growing girl.

They were, however, where he belonged. There was no second-guessing there, no question as to right and wrong. You went on to them, knowing that you were doing something wrong, but you were doing it for yourself and for others like you, so it almost made it right. It helped that there were people against you who were also doing things wrong, but they were nearly right for the same reason. It also helped that if you didn't kill, then you would be killed.

It helped that you were both wrong, but no one cared anyways.

"Milord, Lord Jimmu is well prepared to fight his own wars, and if you don't mind me saying so, there is no reason for you to go to battle as well." Jaken's voice was meek and unaggressive, and he kept his gaze on Sesshoumaru's feet so that he wouldn't appear to be being too forward. "Jimmu will prevail, and he will unite the country. He knows that you are his ally, so there is no need. . ."

Sesshoumaru appreciated the fact that Jaken was trying to keep him from the battle grounds, where death would actually be a possibility. The only remaining enemies against Jimmu were demons, and powerful ones to boot. Some had once been important allies of his fathers, other great enemies. But all refused to change with the times. And Sesshoumaru had already struck his alliance with Jimmu – to not fight alongside him on the battlefield would be more than an embarrassment; it would be a sign of weakness and fear, and Sesshoumaru was not frightened of anything.

As long as he kept telling himself that, he hope to convince himself that it was true.

Rin sniffed quietly in to her sleeves, leaving large wet marks where she had wiped her eyes in the expensive silk. When she first came to him, she was just barely nine and by no means in any hurry to grow up. At ten, she had begun to complain about pains in her chest, and he had had to buy her a new kimono that would hold in her budding breasts. At eleven, he had awoken to the smell of her blood.

This was about more than just a war, and Jaken knew it as well as he did. Perhaps Rin was the only one who didn't know that it was time for her to learn what it meant to be a human woman, with other human girls.

"Keep her safe." Sesshoumaru said, and turned to walk away.

"Lord Sesshoumaru-sama!" Sesshoumaru stopped, but didn't turn around. He couldn't bear to turn back to see her crying now. Even the scent of the salt water made him want to weep, but he was a warrior and warriors don't weep when they leave their wives and daughters to go to the battle fronts. "You will be safe, won't you?"

He had been so proud of her when she had begun to correct her speech. No longer did she struggle with the simple difference between 'me,' 'Rin,' and 'I,' but spoke quite eloquently and with a larger vocabulary of most women twice her age.

And now he had to walk away from her, perhaps to not even return in her life time.

"I love you." He wanted to say, but didn't. He gave a curt nod, and walked on. Jaken would explain it to her. And eventually, after Rin was grown and married and with child, Jaken would leave her, and come to find him.

And Sesshoumaru knew that he would never see her again.

He didn't look back, but he could hear the tears. He could imagine her tiny frame shaking with sobs, her face buried in her hands and hair, as Jaken tried in vain to comfort her.

He wanted to cry too, but he didn't. Warriors never cry.

There are some evils that can't be beaten no matter what your weapon is.

* * *

Rin awoke with dreams still brushing at her consciousness like butterfly wings. The sun hadn't risen yet, but she knew by the time that she was dressed in another of the lovely kimono that Lord Sesshoumaru had left her with, that it would be up and ready to warm the skies for her.

She tiptoed out of bed, skipping over the floorboards that she knew creaked when you stepped on them. From his cot by the fireplace, Jaken snored pitifully, his face tipped back and his cane in his arms. The sight was a humorous one, and Rin slapped a hand over her face to suppress the giggle that bubbled there. She loved it when he slept in, because it meant that she could sneak out of the village for a bit with Ah and Un and play in the Thicket Down until he managed to find her. Even that, she had decided, was a fun game. She would hide, and he would seek, just as they always had.

It reminded her of the times when she didn't have a thick, feather bed to sink in to, nor a warm fireplace to greet her in the morning, nor a thatch roof over her head that smelled of rain and mildew.

She missed the wild so.

She slipped out of her English-styled dressing gown that Sesshoumaru had gotten her from China, pulling the white muslin over head and shivering, naked in the morning cold. On child's knees, she knelt before her bed, reaching under and pulling out the first box she touched. She didn't particularly care which kimono that she wore – frankly, she found them terribly heavy and uncomfortable, and would rather run barefoot in light Yukata, but such outfits were not befitting of Ladies of her status. And, as Sesshoumaru's orphan child, she was the highest Lady in the villa.

The Kimono was light, yellow and orange, and the colors were so nostalgic that she looked away as she wrapped it around her body, accustomed to dressing herself in the yards of fabric. Jaken certainly had never been any help, and she still found herself shy around new people, despite the fact that the denizens of the villa had never been anything but curtious to her, unlike the village that she had lived in before she became Sesshoumaru's charge. Some cuts, she figured, ran deeper than the skin, and everytime an unfamiliar face greeted her, she shivered and wanted to hide, the canine in her wishing that she was on four legs instead of two, because it is so much easier to grovel when you have a tail.

The human in her wants to rebel at the timid thoughts, because she is Lord Sesshoumaru's adopted Orphan, and she represented him in everything that she did.

She was careful to walk barefoot only where no one could see her.

Slipping on her wooden sandals, she winced as they clack-clacked along the hard floor of the cottage, and slipped them off again. She ran fleet footed across the floor, turning the handle with a rebellious joy the belied her status and her age. She casted a guilty glance back at Jaken, who, while not snoring, was still in deep sleep, his head tilted back at an impossible angle, before she turned the handle and fled her home just as the sun rose.

And Jaken sat up straight, and cradled his neck in a webbed hand. He _hated _pretending to be asleep while she ran away every morning.

But there was something about watching the small girl's face light up with joy that made his pain worthwhile.

* * *

Jaken wandered around the villa, sighing dramatically and wistfully as he asked the various shop keepers and early morning shoppers if they had seen young Rin that morning. The villagers, in turn, would sigh and shake their heads, and complain about how young girl's shouldn't wander off on their own, about how it was unbecoming, and about how Jaken really ought to stop letting her get away with things of that manner.

But really, they were all laughing with her.

Rin was a ray of sunshine, darting to and fro, and the villagers had all come to accept her as a sprite, a wandering fairy, and they held her in a different respect than they did anyone else in the villa. While other little girls would be made to take studies, Rin would wander through the fields, barefoot (although she did do her best to be sure that no one found out), and study the properties of herbs and flowers.

She made wreaths of flowers for old Man Jenkins every day, and though he grumbled about it endlessly, he could never find it in his heart to remove the feminine crown from his head. She helped the sick and the elderly, often at the expense of her own health, and she was always more than willing to help the other children in the town. Even children older than her would come to their door, asking Rin's advice on things. Rin, in return, would shyly answer and then turn them away before she became the loquacious little woman that Jaken had always known her to be.

Excepting her quiet tears that she shed every night, that Jaken pretended he didn't hear for her sake, she had fit in to the role of a human girl quite well in the village.

Maybe too well.

The boy was nineteen and awkward, dressed in a hand-me-down old suit that had weathered many generations, carrying a pitiful looking handful of crushed flowers.

"Well boy, out with it. What is it that you want to see Lady Rin about?" Jaken did his best to sound intimidating, but it was hard when the person you were confronting could crush you with a single step. Sometimes he remembered when the human girl that traveled with Lord Sesshoumaru's half-brother would step on him. It was the stuff of nightmares.

Just like young courtiers. "IwaswonderingifImayhaveherhandinmariage." It all came out as one word, spoken quickly and under his breath, and if this hadn't been the fourth boy that Jaken had turned away this week, he wouldn't have understood him. He was getting used to hearing people speak in such an uneasy manner, but he had the boy slow down and repeat himself anyway.

"I. . . wanted to know if I may. . . haveyourpermission. . . to court Lady Rin."

Jaken knew this boy was the son of a farmer, and that alone was enough to want to turn him away. He also knew, though, that his grandfather had sexual relations with his cousin, which meant that his stock was poor and would not make good children. Not to mention that his father was a common frequenter at the local tavern, his mother had a child out of wedlock, and his sister no longer lived in the villa.

Needless to say, Jaken chased the boy like a dog from hell for a good twenty minutes before he was satisfied. "And stay away from Lady Rin! No good rotten inbreed. . ." Jaken murmured under his breath, wiping the sweat from his brow.

In the distance, Jaken could make out a horse approaching, and squinted against the mid-afternoon sun to try to recognize it. _Strangers. _He knew. _Best time I go find Rin. . . _

He didn't want the strangers to get any funny ideas about the village's Lady. Once, a traveler had thought she was a harlot and tried to buy an hour of her time at the tavern. Rin, in her innocence, had not understood, and Old Man Jenkins had to beat the lecherous traveler out of town with his cane. Then he had taken Rin back home, dragging her the whole way by the crook of her elbow, and had beaten Jaken twice as hard for not keeping a better eye on her.

It was not an experience that Jaken would care to repeat.

"Anti Imperialist have been spotted three villages over!" A young man on a younger horse exclaimed, riding through the village streets with worry lines creasing his face. "Go inside your homes and lock your doors!"

The sound that Jaken made was a mix between a choking frog and a frightened bird, running straight in to the woods.

"RIN!"

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Rin wandered through the woods, humming and singing to herself, her lovely silver sandal wrapped over both Ah and Un head. She had tied her kimono, the lovely silver one that matched her sandals, up around her knees with a bit of twine so that she could keep it off of the dew-damp ground.

"Kagome Kagome Kago no naku notori wa Itsu Itsu deyaru yoake tobani suru to kami ga subetta ushiro no shomen dare? Kagome Kagome Kago no naku notori wa Itsu Itsu deyaru yoake tobani suru to kami ga subetta ushiro no shomen dare?" She skipped as she sang, clapped when she walked, and her braid at her back bounced along with her. It was her favorite hairstyle today, for it's simplicity and it's accessibility. She had already run various flowers she had found on the path in to it, and when she had caught her reflection in a spring, she had been pleased with the over all outcome.

She certainly didn't look like the princess that this silver kimono was made for, and she also didn't look like the angels painted on the bottom, singing for the heavens.

But she felt like Rin, and that's what matter.

_Phump. _A heavy sound, a broken stick. Rin looked around her, worried, and gripped on to Ah-Un's reigns. _Sessh. . . _She thought she heard, and pretended that she didn't by repeating her song, slower this time, and turning her head towards the sky in mock-ease, even though her ears were pricked for the slightest sound.

A muffled _mph, _the sound of skin – on – skin, and Rin figured that they were just two lovers from the village, trying not to get caught, and she relaxed, this time singing her children's song to soothe them.

The effect was lost, though, when Jaken burst through the foliage, squawking her name. "RIN!" it was very nearly a bark.

Rin turned back to Ah – Un a bit frantically. Usually, Jaken would announce his presence farther away, giving her time to make herself presentable again. Ah and Un, the dears, lowered their heads, letting her dainty little sandals slip over their necks so that she could reach them.

She slipped them on, wincing and wriggling her foot to dislodge a pebble that had managed to get in the left on, and then tore at the twine around her knees, freeing her kimono but bruising her hands. She looked down at them, unsure of what to do with the bits of twine, and finally flung them in to the woods.

She looked herself over, making sure she was presentable, and caught a flash of color behind her ears. _The moss roses. . . _She shook her head hard enough to leave her seeing spots, and all of the colorful flowers fell dead to the ground. With the toe of her silver sandal, she kicked them in to the forest, too.

And because she knew that Jaken was obviously in a mood, she decided to play the innocent young lady. "Jaken sama?" She added a well-placed quiver to her voice, and she prided herself on how realistic it sounded. She was so proud of it, in fact, that she did it again. "Jaken sama, is that you?"

Jaken clambered up a dirt hill, his uncaring of his outfit, which was made of canvas and wool. "Of course it's me, you twit!" He wailed in a high pitched screech that was shrill enough to pierce glass. "What are you doing so far from the village!?"

Rin looked down, her eyelashes fluttering femininely like the other girls in the village had been practicing the other day, to help flirt with boys. She figured that it would be helpful in this sort of situation, too. "I thought. . . I thought that it would be safe, Jaken-sama." She though about her neighbor's puppies, the two that she couldn't save, and real tears began to form in her eyes at the painful memories"There are no more demons to worry about, so. . ."

Jaken snorted, his beak-like upper lip curling in distaste. He wasn't worried about the demons at this particular moment, but he did have to remind that girl continually that even though demons had lost most of their predjudism, they were still far more powerful than she was. And, like humans, there were always bad ones running about. "Of course there are still demons to worry about! They may not kill you for your human blood, but you are Sesshoumaru-sama's charge and that will be enough reason! Not to mention the recent uprising. . ." He stopped here, because he knew that the thought of Anti Imperialists so near the village would send her in to a fit, and he didn't want to struggle with her all the way home. Best, he decided, to tell her when she was barricaded inside of their cottage, safe and sound and unable to run about the village making sure everyone else was okay. "It isn't safe for you to be wandering around alone!"

"But, Jaken-sama, Ah-chan and Un-chan were with me, so I wasn't really alone, was I?

Rin asked, adding a note of sweetness to her already sing song voice. Jaken was obviously worried about something, so she figured if she looked positively care free, he might be more loose tongued. She batted her eyelashes once more for effect.

Jaken felt the heat rising on his face, exasperated that this was taking so long. If the Anti Imperialists had young horses, the same as the rider who had come in to warn them, then they weren't too far behind. "Rin, just come back to the village." Jaken said, a pleading tone in his voice. He gave her an expression of 'I'll tell you later if you move _now,' _and he raised a single, scale-coated finger pointed back towards the village.

Rin nodded and clambered most unladylike on to Ah-Un's back, and the twin headed dragon sauntered off a light trot back down the road, leaving Jaken alone on the forest path.

"Oh, Sesshoumaru-sama. . ." Jaken tilted his head skywards, in an exasperated fashion. "If you could only see her now. . ."

Little did he know, Sesshoumaru had seen.

And Sesshoumaru had nearly wept.


End file.
